“20yrs of personal tube platform expertise and competitive commuting advantage rendered useless by some green paint,” tweeted an obscure Spurs-supporting, cat-loving Londoner with a couple of hundred followers. A few days later his little moan had attracted 13k retweets, 38k likes and the attention of the national media.

Time to stand clear of the bores, you might think. But it is our strong reactions to apparently trivial things that reveal the most about us, and this particular cyclone in a coffee cup is no exception.

The ostensive cause for dismay among seasoned commuters is that knowing where to stand so as to be right in front of the doors when they open gives them a “competitive advantage” over tourists and provincials. Losing this marginal benefit may seem a minor inconvenience when the quid pro quo is a system that is fairer and more efficient. But that is precisely the problem. Efficient, equitable systems are very un-British.

Take the system aspect first. The British way is to muddle through on the basis of vaguely understood traditions and conventions. Our entire culture, from our political constitution to the way we queue, is based on that principle of minimal principles. The regulation of social life must be light enough to leave room for discretion and common sense. When Brits abroad see Germans waiting for the man to turn green before crossing the road, even when there isn’t a car for miles, they break out in a nervous sweat.

Green grids on the station platform smack too much of this kind of rigidly imposed order. Drawing a clear line we cannot step over steps over another kind of fuzzy line that we know is there without anyone drawing it. But surely a little systematising is justified to end the frequent scrums at train doors? Such a logical response underestimates the British disdain for systems, one that explains resistance to the philosophies of Kant and Hegel as well as to often perfectly sensible EU regulations. Britons are willing to pay a price to pay to keep rigid rules at bay, as the Brexit referendum result illustrated.

As to the argument that the new system is fairer, this is a case of the wrong kind of fairness on the line. Traditional British fairness is not about treating everyone equally. It’s about giving subtle, informal advantage to insiders and locals. The outraged commuters may not realise it, but they are following the ethics of both old-boys networks and “Britain first” nationalists. Both see preferential treatment for “people like us” as more just than treating any Tomasz, Dag or Ali the same.

Traditional British fairness is not about treating everyone equally

These attitudes towards fairness, efficiency and systems hang together. They flow from Britain’s traditionally communitarian ethos, which roots values in the enduring culture of the people. It sees society as an organic whole rather than as a mechanistic system. As such, its flourishing cannot be judged purely on the basis of how much it yields. Nor are its parts replaceable like a machine: to be a fully fledged member requires growing within it. This is not so much a vision of Britishness that is usually clearly seen but a feeling or temperament that while often unacknowledged is still enduring and influential, as the response to the new platform signs shows.

It’s easy to see what is attractive about this but we should not be seduced by a false nostalgia for a gentler, less bureaucratic age when common decency was all we needed. Unwritten rules are no longer enough, not only because we live in a more fragmented society in which people can no longer be relied upon to follow them. Nods and winks too often serve the interests of the most privileged and promote a narrow parochialism.

The trick is to make the rules of public life clearer without making them rigid. On public transport, as in all of the public square, civility and common sense can be buttressed rather than threatened by interventions that are not too bossy or inflexible. The green lanes could be a good example of this, an encouragement rather than a directive to consider other passengers. No one will be fined for stepping beyond them. Locals will even retain some “competitive advantage” by knowing which door is nearer their destination’s exit. Society may be an organic whole, but every garden needs some order brought to it if it is not to run to seed.

• Julian Baggini is the author of Freedom Regained: The Possibility of Free Will (Granta)